Rabbi Baruch Chalomish is on trial in England for operating what prosecutors call a "commercial cocaine-supply operation" and paying prostitutes with coke. That's the bad news. The good news is that his partner in crime is named Nasir Abbas.

Peace is possible, people. If Jews and Arabs can work together to sell cocaine and service hookers, what can't they accomplish?

A rabbi set up in business as a drug dealer and lavished his supplies of cocaine on young prostitutes at parties, a jury was told yesterday.

Rabbi Baruch Chalomish, 54, bearded and wearing a trilby hat, shared the dock at Manchester Crown Court with an interpreter who occasionally translated the barristers' words into Hebrew.

He was said by the prosecution to be a wealthy man who took up with Nasir Abbas, also 54, a convicted dealer, who had the "knowhow" and the contacts in the drug trade. The rabbi was the financier in the operation. They set up their "commercial cocaine-supply operation" in an hotel service flat in Shudehill, Manchester, where, it is alleged, Chalomish liked to dispense the drug in return for "sexual favours".